


rip us to pieces (we'll just laugh it off)

by singsongsung



Category: Dublin Murder Squad Series - Tana French
Genre: Gen, misogynist detectives ain't no match for my girls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:07:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22679950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singsongsung/pseuds/singsongsung
Summary: There’s something about the way the woman's standing, one ear surreptitiously tuned into every small sound, her eyes taking in everything at once - they’re things Antoinette recognizes in herself, things she can feel reflected in her own body. She takes in the woman once more, small - significantly shorter than Antoinette herself - and dressed in a woolen blazer and well-fitting jeans, and wonders: Detective?AKA: the fic where Antoinette and Cassie meet, because I need them to.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 20





	rip us to pieces (we'll just laugh it off)

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place, vaguely, in the same universe as build your kingdom in my heart (if you want), which takes place after _The Likeness_ and is centered on Sam and Cassie. I don't think you really need to read one to understand the other. This is set after _The Trespasser_.
> 
> Title from The Glorious Sons' "Kingdom In My Heart."

_just a young gun, with the quick fuse_  
_i was uptight, wanna let loose_  
_i was dreaming of bigger things_  
_and wanna leave my own life behind_  
_not a yes sir, not a follower_  
_fit the box, fit the mold_  
_have a seat in the foyer, take a number_  
_i was lightning, before the thunder_  
\- imagine dragons, "thunder"

Antoinette is bent over her computer, typing efficiently, when she hears a deep, rich laugh, and both her eyes and her chin lift upward without even a fragment of input from her brain. That kind of laugh is rare in Murder - the lads are always hassling someone (each other, goodnaturedly; her, the jury's out), but that leads to snorts and sniggers, and they’ve probably got more gallows humour than any other squad, but that inspires half-grins and the whispering kind of laughter that glides along with an exhale. Real laughter, all packed to its brim with warmth? That’s a rarity. 

The laughter is paired, not long after it begins, with a burst of giggles, high-pitched, that buttercup-shadow, cotton-candy-clouds sound of little girlhood. Antoinette suspects she never possessed that laugh as a kid, and then knows it, dead certain, when the child bubble-laughs, “Daddy.” 

She’s struck by the fact that she’s on her feet, having moved away from her desk without knowing it, and that she’s walking in the direction of the laughter. She’s curious. She’s seen the squad’s kids in hallways before, preteens slouched and waiting for a ride to the orthodontist, younger kids half-defiant half-sheepish and the hiss of their father’s disappointed voices over some piece of mischief at school, children old enough to take the Leaving Cert, hardly children anymore, hanging around to plead for money to buy whatever piece of technology is trendy that week. This particular small voice, though - not bubblegum sweet but the real thing, honey on toast at a worn-in kitchen table - she thinks she’d have remembered it, if she’d heard it before. 

The small voice belongs, as she’d thought, to a young girl, and the young girl belongs to O’Neill. Antoinette’s never met his family before - he wears a ring, so she knows he’s married, but his wife wasn’t at the first and only squad Christmas party she attended (somehow, downright remarkably, she's had a family commitment on the exact evening of the party ever since), and unlike the other arseholes she has the pleasure of working with, he doesn’t complain about his missus. The girl he’s got in his arms - four, maybe five? - has his hair, and she’s beaming at him like O’Neill’s the best thing that’s ever happened to the whole earth. It’s nearly enough for Antoinette’s hard heart to consider softening for a half second. 

About a foot past the two of them is a woman who blends into the building so well that Antoinette’s eyes barely catch on her. She’s watching the daddy-daughter exchange with her head tilted and one corner of her mouth curled upward like she’s tempering an indulgent smile, but there’s something about the way she’s standing, one ear surreptitiously tuned into every small sound, her eyes taking in everything at once - they’re things Antoinette recognizes in herself, things she can feel reflected in her own body. She takes in the woman once more, small - significantly shorter than Antoinette herself - and dressed in a woolen blazer and well-fitting jeans, and wonders: _Detective?_

“Conway,” O’Neill says, interrupting the careful calculations of her train of thought. “Hiya. We didn’t disturb your work, did we?” 

“No,” Antoinette says, and finds that she doesn’t have a reason ready, on the tip of her tongue, to justify her presence in the hall. Their laughter, the realness of it, has thrown her off her game.

“Are you a detective?” the little girl asks eagerly. She’s got her father’s ruddy cheeks; a face that should go on a cereal box, on a billboard for something wholesome. 

Antoinette nods. “I am.” 

“You work with my daddy?” She’s got O’Neill’s tie between her small fingers and an obvious death-grip on the heart beneath his shirt. For the first time, Antoinette finds herself looking at him and not thinking of his surname first - thinking, instead, _Sam._

“I do,” she tells the girl. She’s not great at talking to children, at hitting the notes that will resonate with them; that’s Stephen’s purview, crouched down casually and a grin in his eyes that says he’s sharing a secret. 

Smile on her face, the girl tells her proudly, “ _I’m_ going to be a detective when I grow up.” 

There is a ghost of a smile inside Antoinette’s mouth; it never makes it onto her lips, it hurts the insides of her cheeks. Behind Sam’s shoulder the woman who must be his wife has a warring expression on her face, two ferocious things, pride and grief, engaged in an unsettled battle. “Fair play to you,” she says simply. 

Sam huffs something close to a laugh and adjusts his daughter in his hold. “Conway, this is Grace; Grace, this is Detective Conway.” He shifts his feet and shoulders toward the woman behind him. “And this is my wife - ”

Antoinette’s most pleasant expression automatically attempts to take up residence on her face - according to Stephen, its success tends to vary. “Good to meet you, Mrs. O’Neill.” 

The woman steps forward - longer strides than Antoinette was expecting, something wry tugging at her mouth - and extends a hand. “Cassie Maddox. Good to meet you, too, Detective Conway.” 

Antoinette’s faux pas hangs in the air around them, making her feel twitchy. She imagines that Cassie Maddox, strong chin and see-everything eyes, feels about the same as she’d feel if someone had called her ‘Detective Moran’s partner.’ She’s so used to the squad, to the men on it, to their wives with highlighted hair and purses hooked into the crooks of their elbows and disdain for their husbands’ late evenings, that she’d stopped thinking she would ever encounter anything different. A stupid mistake, especially for a detective. 

Still, Cassie smiles at her, all ease, like the awkwardness of thirty seconds ago is far in the past for her. “I’d like to buy you a pint, if you have some time this week.” 

Antoinette blinks at her. She thinks, or at least she’d like to think, that she’s less prickly than she used to be, her edges not quite so sharp, though she’s hardly falling over herself to be a nice, accommodating girl and become best mates with all the lads on the squad. But now, in a horrified rush, she wonders if O’Neill, who has always been sound as far as she’s concerned, thinks she’s still too much of a nettle and has made the extremely misguided and unprofessional decision that All Detective Conway Needs Is A Few Female Friends - probably with a heap of good intentions, but that’s not enough to keep her fingers from curling into a fist. 

Then Cassie says, “I used to work Murder.” 

And Antoinette realizes she was right. _Detective_ , in the set of Cassie’s shoulders and the hurried-but-not-urgent cadence of her walk. A chance meeting with O’Neill’s family is about the last place she would have expected to find someone who’d walked this road before her, ignoring the stinging cuts from thorns, not pausing when her feet stumbled over uneven stones, pushing forward through storm after storm, picking her way around boggy ground she might sink in to. She doesn’t understand how she never came across this information; presumably O’Neill’s wife would be a useful contact for Murder in whatever squad she’s currently on. 

“Thursday,” Antoinette says slowly, reviewing her schedule and all the things that need doing quickly in her mind. “I could make Thursday work.” 

“Thursday’s good,” Cassie agrees. 

“Mummy,” Grace says then, and it’s jarring, somehow. Antoinette knows female detectives who have children, but she’s never come face-to-face with their motherhood like this before. “Are we still going to see _Moana_?” 

“Of course we are, sweet girl,” Cassie says, and to Antoinette’s amusement, she and O’Neill exchange a steeled, okay-let’s-do-this look, like they’re gearing up to enter the scene of a gruesome murder, not go watch a children’s film. 

“Enjoy,” Antoinette says, and O'Neill flashes her a wry smile. 

“Thursday,” Cassie says to her again. “I’ll meet you here, yeah?” 

Antoinette nods, and the family heads off toward the stairs. Cassie hitches her carry-all bag up on her shoulder, Grace kicks one of her little feet lazily in the air, and O’Neill cups a hand briefly against the back of Cassie’s neck, an easy, intimate, hello-there kind of gesture that has Antoinette thinking _Sam_ again. 

And then she thinks, _Cassie_. A woman who’s worked Murder. A woman who once may have donned Antoinette’s very own suit armour and let blows glance off it as she sat in that stifling squad room and did her goddamn job. 

Antoinette wonders why she left. She has ideas, and they all make the inside of her mouth go sour.

“Did you know O’Neill’s wife is a detective?” she asks Steve on Tuesday, zipping through traffic on their way to pick up a witness for questioning. 

He runs his tongue along his top teeth, taking a moment before he answers. When he does, she understands why. “I wasn’t sure I was supposed to know,” he says. 

Antoinette frowns, both at his response and at the snail-slow driver in front of her. “Why not?”

“I don’t know anything for certain, but I heard she works with Mackey.” 

The surprise of that hits her right in the face. That means - “Undercover?” she asks, just to be sure she’s getting Steve’s meaning right. 

“It’s what I’ve heard,” he confirms. 

Antoinette turns that over in her head, trying to arrange it in a way that makes sense. She thinks Fleas probably would’ve told her if he worked with the wife of a detective on her squad, but not necessarily. Undercovers are a secretive bunch, heavy on the need-to-know. 

“They’ve got a kid,” she finally says. That doesn’t mean Cassie can’t work Undercover, of course, but most parents aren’t like Frank Mackey, confident in their ability to forever slip out of danger’s grasp. Undercovers have a higher morality rate than the rest of them; it’s a tough job to do when your own features in a small face are waiting for you to come home. 

“She might run operations,” Stephen suggests. “Like Mackey does.” 

She nods slowly. It’s a possibility. 

“Why d’you mention it?” Stephen asks. 

“I ran into her the other day; I guess she was meeting O’Neill.” She changes lanes smoothly. “She invited me for a pint.” A glance at Steve’s face reveals that he’s baffled in the same way she was. “She used to be on Murder.” 

His eyebrows tick up a smidge. “Really.” 

“Really.” 

“Are you going? For the pint?” 

Antoinette nods, waiting impatiently for the driver in front of her to make a right turn. “Thursday.” 

“Are you going to try and convince her to come back? Upgrade your partner?” 

Steve’s got his teasing grin on, relaxed in his seat despite her driving, which makes nearly everyone else go white-knuckled, but there’s something at the edges of his eyes that makes Antoinette’s stomach clench. That thing tucked into the corners of his gaze: it’s a real question. 

“We’ll see how annoyed I am with you by then,” she says, teasing back, but she hopes he can hear it, the undercurrent in her voice meant to tell him she really is just joking. She isn’t looking for a trade. 

“Fair enough,” Stephen says with a laugh.

She looks at him again, but his eyes are on the road. 

On Thursday Cassie’s wearing slim black trousers and a blouse that’s rolled up to neat cuffs just below her elbows. It’s not an outfit that screams Undercover, not like Mackey’s beat-up leather jacket, but then again, the whole point of Undercover is that it doesn’t scream anything at all. The smile she gives Antoinette is quick and bright, sincere. 

“Alright day?” she asks, the way someone on the squad would, if Antoinette was someone else. There is a irritatingly pathetic burst of warmth in her chest. She tries to quell it.

“Alright,” she says with a nod. “How was _Moana_?”

“Three to six in the evening, every day, the soundtrack’s the only thing that plays at our gaff,” Cassie says, with a half-and-half split of exhaustion and fondness. “The joy of choosing the music you listen to should never be taken for granted. Should we head?” 

Antoinette nods, and waves a hand to indicate that Cassie should go ahead. She follows, their steps keeping time, as Cassie leads the way past Grogan’s, the pub most of Antoinette’s colleagues at Dublin Castle frequent, and over a couple more blocks. They don’t bother with small talk, and it isn’t awkward. 

At the pub Cassie’s chosen, the bartender beams at the sight of her. “Fuck me backwards. That can’t be Maddox?”

“In the flesh,” Cassie says, grin stretching into her cheeks. “It’s your lucky day, Liam. Couple of pints, yeah?”

He leans toward her, forearms resting on the bar. “Have you ditched that ball and chain of yours yet?” he asks her playfully. 

Cassie mirrors his position, leaning in too, which enhances her cleavage just a little. She lifts her left hand, flashes two sparkling silver rings at him. “Sorry.” 

Liam throws his grin in Antoinette’s direction. “Breaks my heart every time, this one.” 

He pours them pints and slides them across the counter. Cassie hands one to Antoinette and leads the way to a booth. She chooses a side and settles in comfortably, as if she were in her own sitting room. 

Before Antoinette’s even got both arms out of her coat, Cassie says, all conversational, “I used to get stroppy with Sam about you sometimes.” 

Antoinette can only look at her for a moment, trying to piece together what the hell that might mean. “You…?”

“He tells me about the squad.”

Antoinette presses her lips together. “He tells you about me,” she clarifies. 

“More like what you’ve been on the receiving end of,” Cassie says, her eyes narrowing in distaste. “And I’ve told him - a sharp word here, a disapproving look there? That’s not going to stop a bollix like Roche. Won’t even slow him down. But he told me he didn’t think you’d appreciate him trying to be your champion in that fight, which I guess is probably true enough.” 

Hands in her lap, not touching her pint, Antoinette says stiffly, “I don’t need a champion.”

“I know you don’t.” Cassie’s eyes and voice are level, like she might really mean what she’s saying. “But it’s shite.” 

Cassie creeps up a few places in Antoinette’s good books for not adding something like _I’m sorry for what you’ve been going through._ Things are better since she’s stopped seeing everything through smudged lenses that make every comment, every laugh, into an arrow pointing straight in her direction that she has to stop mid-air with her bare hand. She feels civil, at the very least, with most of the squad, but Breslin and McCann’s replacements, two green kids eager to be the big bad Ds of their childhood dreams, ran right to Roche when he lifted a nasty wing to take them under it. They’re new, and Antoinette’s established, they’ve been floaters for years and she’s got a solve rate that’d make a murderer’s eyes water, but that doesn’t seem to mean much of anything: the target still settles squarely on her back. 

“It’s not like that on your squad?” she guesses. “Not even when you joined?"

A flicker of surprise darts over Cassie’s face. “I’m not on a squad. I put my papers in years ago.” And that explains why Antoinette hasn’t heard about her before. “It was like that for me sometimes, on Murder. Not as bad, I don’t think, but… well, you know. Comments about the blowjobs I must’ve given. My delicate womanly mind. The parts of my anatomy that ticked the right diversity boxes for the gaffer. O’Kelly didn’t like me much, either.” 

Antoinette manages to ask the question she desperately wants to avoid. “Is that why you left?” 

Cassie shakes her head, curls bouncing against her cheeks, and takes a drink. “I would’ve stayed forever. I thought I was going to.” She considers her pint like it’s trying to tell her something. “I had a good partner.” 

“O’Neill,” Antoinette surmises. 

“No,” Cassie says on a laugh. “No. I worked with Sam sometimes, but no.” She takes another drink, swallows harder than she needs to. “My partner’s name was Rob.”

There is so much, in that one syllable. There is a caress, soft as a hand on your hair when you’re falling asleep. There is something broken and jagged and angry. There is the kind of nostalgia that wraps you up in its spiderweb. 

Antoinette wracks her mind for any detectives she knows called Rob. “Where is he now?”

“General,” Cassie says. “Last I heard.” She pushes her hair back behind both ears. “When you have the right partner, when it _clicks_ , when you’ve got that synchronicity, like you’re right in each other’s cells, it takes the colour out of everything else. You’re impenetrable, the two of you.”

“Impenetrable,” Antoinette echoes skeptically. She doesn’t need to say more, doesn’t need to point out the obvious fact that Cassie’s perfect partner Rob isn’t sitting next to her right now, the two of them still ensconced in the glowing bubble of their togetherness. 

Something very, very sad passes through Cassie’s eyes, something sad enough that Antoinette has the ridiculous urge to apologize. She understands abruptly that this is not something Cassie wants to tell her, but something she feels the need to. 

Lips in an up-tilted shape that is not a smile, Cassie says, “The only way to burn is from the inside out.” She shoves a wayward curl out of her face, and with it, that immeasurable sadness. “Do you have a good partner? It’s Moran, right?” 

Antoinette nods. 

“You trust him? You work well together - not just in interviews, all the time?” 

She gulps down a mouthful of beer before she says, “I think so,” and then acknowledge that that’s not quite the truth and amends, “Yeah.”

Cassie nods, and she lets that settle between them, take up residence on the table, bulky and cumbersome, impossible to ignore. The silence stretches until Antoinette starts to find it unbearable - no doubt Cassie was a good detective, once. 

She breathes out through her nose, a quick annoyed exhale that says she knows she’s lost, and asks, “What do you do now?” 

“I’m a psychologist.” 

So those silences are still a tool of her trade. Psychologists have tricks up their sleeves just like detectives. Antoinette doesn’t think she’s being worked, but she’d hate it if she was and she didn’t realize it. 

“Do you miss Murder?” she asks. It’s another question she doesn’t quite want answered. 

“Yes,” Cassie says instantly, no hesitation, no time to think about it. “Sometimes Sam comes home and I can see it on him - God, I could almost swear I can _smell_ it on him. That rhythm, you know? When you’re deep in the case and the evidence is starting to link together and you just have to stretch your hand out the smallest bit more, and you’ll get there. I miss it like hell.” 

Cassie takes a gulp from her pint and presses the back of her hand to her chin to wipe away a droplet that escaped her bottom lip. Here, in the pub, Cassie-O’Neill’s-wife and Cassie-the-mum and even Cassie-the-psychologist aren’t so close to the surface. Antoinette is seeing Cassie the detective, clear as day; it’s like she’s morphing, gently and briefly, into an old form she once held. And, Antoinette realizes, she’s not being worked. Cassie is being upfront with her: detective to detective.

“But someone once told me,” Cassie continues, her words slow enough that it’s obvious she’s choosing them precisely, “that everything in life has a sacrifice attached to it. And I think I believe that. If I’d stayed on Murder, or tried to go back to Murder, I couldn’t’ve married Sam. And without Sam, I wouldn’t have Grace.” Her fingers trace the condensation along the side of her glass, marking a sloppy _G_ on its surface, and she smiles. “That little girl’s worth Murder two times over.” 

Antoinette just watches her for a beat, and then blurts, without really meaning to, “You like being a mother.” 

Cassie’s laugh is soaring, like a small colourful bird startled out of a tree. “The face on you. God. I would’ve made the same face, once upon a time. Yeah, I like being a mother.” Her teeth press into the corner of her lip for an instant. “Gracie… There were a few weeks, when I was on Murder and after, when I couldn’t see anything good anymore. Even a nice pretty sunrise just looked… useless. Futile. I found those things again, eventually, the good things. Sorted myself out, fell in love, got married, went back to school for the degree I’d always wanted. Had Grace.” Cassie’s eyes are on the table, but they’re also somewhere else, caught between then and now. “I could never wake up in the morning now and forget about the good things. They’re all wrapped up in her, and she’s so - so sure and so strong, even though Sam treats her like his great-great-grandmother’s tea set.” 

At that, Antoinette can’t help but smile. Cassie gives her a smile in return, cementing herself in the present moment again. 

“If I can help her keep all of that,” Cassie says. “If I can help her tie it tight around herself so that she’ll always be that way, whether she really does become a Guard or not… if I can do it, it might be the most important thing I’ll ever do.” 

Antoinette remembers Holly Mackey’s heart-wrenching expression in the glade behind a school where her father had assumed she’d be safe, and she wonders, briefly, if Frank ever set similar goals - but no. Frank will never get it, not like Antoinette does, not like Cassie. Raising a girl into a woman whose feet will be sure in this world, who will be just malleable enough at the right times and just fierce enough at others and resilient above all? That’s a job for a woman who had to find sure footing on her own. 

“I think you can do it,” she says, and discovers that she means it. 

“I think you can, too,” Cassie says with the significant tilt of one eyebrow. “I’m angry about how things have been for you. Quigley was a stupid gobshite when I worked with him, and I’m sure he’s no better now. And Roche - ” Her face scrunches up with unadulterated contempt. “You shouldn’t have to stick it out - but I think you can. You’re probably the best detective on the whole squad.” 

Antoinette mirrors the raised eyebrow. “Besides O’Neill.” 

Cassie shrugs, a mischievous, cheeky thing, and raises her glass to her lips again. Antoinette can practically see her retelling this part of the conversation to O’Neill a couple hours from now, teasing. She’s beginning to like Sam all the more for the fact that Cassie chose him. 

“My unsolicited advice, Antoinette?” Cassie says, cheekiness gone, beer pushed to the side. “If you trust your partner, _trust_ your partner. Tell him when the lads are being arses, when something’s gone missing, when you’re being slowed down, and let him take half of it all. Half the pieces that need putting back together, half the anger, half the solving it anyway because _fuck_ the rest of ’em - fuck Roche and his lackeys. Let Moran take half. Eventually, it’ll be all you see. Him, taking it on. Right at your shoulder.” The breath leaves her in a quick, audible rush. “Your shieldmate.” 

Looking down into her glass, Antoinette gives a slow, single nod. She can see the wisdom in what Cassie’s saying - not enough to rush back to Dublin Castle and talk to Steve about all the things he knows about but she’s made it very clear she doesn’t want to discuss, but enough to take the advice under real consideration. 

That time Roche pissed in her locker, the smell lingered for days. Everyone else pretended their nostrils had stopped working. She wonders how it might’ve been different if someone - Steve - had a working nose and easily-triggered gag reflex and a loud bitchfest about how an eejit quite that uncreative has got to be a shite detective. 

Cassie rummages in her purse. “I’ll give you my number,” she says. “Text or call, if you ever want to. If you just need to yell about something, or talk something through. I hope you’ve got Moran for all that, but… ” She shrugs and slides her card across the table. “You can have me too. And I’m not on the squad anymore; I’d only be happy to break any wrists attached to hands that go for your arse again.” 

A small laugh falls out of Antoinette’s mouth. The best thing is that she can actually see Cassie, all disarming shortness and tousled curls and crinkle-eyed smile, marching into the squad room and doing it. “Thanks,” she says, plucking up the card. 

“It’s an offer with conditions,” Cassie says. 

The way she perches her chin on a hand makes Antoinette doubt she’s entirely serious, but she’s still a touch wary when she asks, “Which are… ?”

“Only one condition, really.” Cassie leans back on her side of the booth. “If you see my daughter out in the hall any time, staring at you like you’re Wonder Woman, could you give her a smile? Maybe throw in a wave? My detective career is ancient history to her, but you - you’re her new hero.”

To Antoinette’s horror, she thinks she’s beginning to blush. “I’ve never had a fan before,” she says, aiming for casual. 

Cassie smiles again, with something impish in it. She would’ve been fun to work with, Antoinette thinks. “Just you wait, Conway,” she says. “Just wait.” 

The next morning, Stephen’s already in the squad room when she gets there, teeth closed around the chewed-up end of a Biro, half his hair pushed upward into boyish angles. “How’d it go?” he asks. 

“Alright,” Antoinette says, setting her satchel down on her desk. She can tell he’s waiting for more, so she gives it to him: “She’s not an undercover. She left the force. She’s a psychologist now.” 

Stephen grins. “She analyze you?” 

Antoinette rolls her eyes. She doesn’t dignify that with a response. 

All her silence does to Steve’s grin is relax it, make it softer. “You like her,” he says knowingly, sounding far more happy about that than he needs to be. “Will you see her again?” 

She whacks his shoulder lightly with a folder. “It wasn’t a _date_. Let’s go have a chat with the vic’s sister.” 

He stands up, grin still firmly in place. “You’re gonna see her again.”

In the unmarked car on their way to Howth, Antoinette chews the words in her mouth, over and over again until she needs to spit them out or swallow them, and then manages to tell Stephen, “Someone shredded the copies of those newspaper clippings Sophie pulled from under the victim’s bed.” 

Steve doesn’t move much - just his eyes, drifting in her direction and then fastening on her face. 

“McEarlean or Walsh,” she says, in response to the question he hasn’t asked. One of Roche’s proteges. “He got a bit inventive. He’s been leaving a single shred every place he thinks I might find it.” 

“Motherfucker,” Stephen says. His tone is casual as can be, but just out of the corner of her eye, Antoinette spots one of his hands in his lap, sees how his fingers curl inward and clench. His other hand is busy pulling his mobile from his pocket. “I’ll ask Sophie for them again. Maybe scans this time, yeah? Not paper… ”

He busies himself on his phone, typing away. Antoinette doesn’t say anything. There’s something caught in her throat, something that would sting her eyes if she let it. She remembers the caress of Cassie’s voice. _Shieldmate._

Even if the car weren’t handling smoothly, the engine purring, the road racing along underneath them, Antoinette still thinks she’d feel like she was flying. 

fin.


End file.
